House of Green Turf

follow me, she thought, as I followed him. I will take you where I took him, and make use of you as he made use of me. And I’ll hurt you as he hurt me, and with interest. When I’m done with you, you shall have one man round your neck for life, and go the rest of your way ringing him like a leper’s bell to keep every other man off, for fear of bringing him to the same end. I know your kind!

‘Very well,’ said Maggie. ‘I shall be watching for you. I’ll come.’

‘What more do you want?’ said Friedl harshly. ‘He told you all this, didn’t he? That man you sent here. Here in this very place he asked me what you have asked me, and I told him. And what did you need with either of us to tell you? Who knew better than you what sent Robin rushing down the slope there and into the lake? Yes, you had the right to refuse him, if you didn’t want him, yes, you could tell him to go away—am I blaming you? What was it to you if somebody else loved him, and wanted what you didn’t want? But you cannot have it both ways. If you think you did him no wrong, why do you come weeping back like a penitent, asking to be forgiven for killing him? If you did nothing shameful to him, why are you ashamed?’

In the half-circle of bushes, with the night deepening round them, all colours on the landward side had become an opaque wash of olive green. Against the faintly luminous shimmer of lake and sky, thinly veiled by a lace of branches, Friedl in her black dress prowled restlessly. The slight rustle of her feet in the grass frayed at the silence when her voice ceased. Somewhere a twig cracked. She reared her head to listen, frozen in mid-stride. The moment she was still the ultimate silence flooded in and possessed the world.

‘No… Nothing! No, nobody else ever comes here at night.’

She came a step nearer, turning her back on the lake, and stood black and tense against the pallor of the sky.

‘I loved him. You understand? For two days, just two days, I was his mistress. But he never thought seriously of me. What man ever did? You were there, you with everything. How could he even see me for long? You don’t believe me?’

‘I believe you,’ said Maggie. ‘I am sorry!’

The sense she had had on the staircase of something rank and bitter and unprovoked assaulting her had become here an emanation of horror, unrelieved by the breeze or the cool of the air. For the first time in her life she knew it for hate, and was helpless in face of it. The tall darkness seemed to grow taller, hanging over her malignant and assured. It was not fear that held her paralysed, but a sick revulsion from the proximity of such hatred, an intuition that if it touched her she would never feel clean again.

‘It is late to be sorry. Why did you not call him back then? Why did you never tell what you knew?’

‘Why didn’t you?’ said Maggie. ‘After we were gone, when they waited for him to come back for his things, and still he didn’t come?’

‘Why should I? What would have been the good? What did I care about his things? Could I have brought him back from the dead by telling?’

‘You are quite sure, then—you were quite sure all the time—that he is dead?’

It was the only question that remained, whether she asked it of herself or Friedl.

‘His body,’ she said, ‘never came ashore. I don’t say that is proof of anything, I only say it is so. If there is anything more that you know, anything final, please tell me.’

There was a soundless movement in the dark, and Friedl’s face was close to hers, pale and fierce beneath the black hair.

‘Dead?’ she said softly. ‘Yes, he’s dead. You are right, I didn’t tell your Herr Killian everything I know. The body never came ashore here in Austria, no—but in Germany it did! That same winter they sent me over to help at the hotel in Felsenbach. Marianne is married to the innkeeper there, and they have a good ski season while we are quiet here. You do not know this place? Our river runs through it after it leaves the lake, before it comes back into Austria. That year there was a sudden thaw early in February, and the Rulenbach came down out of the lake in flood and brought a man ashore. What was left of a man! No, I still did not speak! Why speak? What could it do for him or for me? And after so long one would not say he was recognisable, no, not easily recognisable. He had no papers on him… how could he? Almost he had no clothes. They buried him out of charity, and put a stone over him, too, but without a name. But I knew!’ she cried, her voice rising dangerously. ‘I knew who he was! You want proof? He still had a signet ring on his finger, after all that time. I saw it, and I knew it. And so will you know it! Don’t take my word, look for yourself! Do you remember this?’

The pale claw of her hand plunged suddenly into the pocket of her dress, and plucked out a slip of white card, and something else that she fumbled wildly for a moment before her shaking fingers could control it. She had come prepared with everything she needed for the coup de grace. The torch was a tiny thing that nestled in her palm, but it produced a thin bright beam, enough for her purpose.

‘Look! Look! You wished to know—know, then, be certain! Do you remember this face?’

She thrust it before Maggie’s eyes, and held the torch-beam close. A postcard photograph, half-length, of a young man playing the ’cello. It was taken somewhat from his right side; his head was inclined in delighted concentration over his instrument, so that the eyes were veiled beneath rounded lids, and the highlight picked out the line of a smooth boyish forehead and a well-shaped jaw and chin. The lips, full and firm, curled slightly in an absorbed smile, the hair, wavy and thick, was shaken forward out of its concert-platform neatness by his exertions. He looked young, carefree, and as single-minded as a child. And the photographer, like every photographer who ever made studies of a string-player, had lavished his most loving care on the braced and sensitive hands. The bow hand, beautiful in its taut grace and power, occupied the forefront of the picture; and on the third finger was a heavy seal-ring with a black, oval stone. Even by this light Maggie could distinguish the curling flourishes of the letter R in reverse.

‘Can you see clearly enough? Here, take it, hold it… It was you he wanted… you who killed him. Yes, killed him! Is it the right man? Is it the right ring? You know him?’

‘Yes,’ said Maggie in a broken whisper. ‘Yes, I know him.’

Friedl snatched away her hand, and left the photograph quivering in Maggie’s hold. She had reached the end of the journey, there was nowhere beyond to go. The darkness and the watery shimmer, the pencil of torch-light, the pale glare of Friedl’s vengeful face, lurched and swirled round her in a moment of faintness, and suddenly the burden of this corrosive hate was more than she could bear. Her last refuge was gone, she could no longer hold on to any shred of doubt or hope. The photograph fluttered from her nerveless fingers. She turned and stumbled away through the bushes, blind and desperate, fending herself off from trees, tripping over roots, wild to escape from